ACLU

Court: Suspicionless Searches of Travelers’ Phones and Laptops Unconstitutional

Government Must Have Reasonable Suspicion of Digital Contraband Before Searching Electronic Devices at the U.S. Border

I refused to become an FBI informant, the government put me on the no fly list

With the help of the ACLU, I’m bringing a lawsuit to challenge the government’s actions.

One of the FBI’s Major Claims in the iPhone Case Is Fraudulent

“We have enormous computing power in the US government, but we need to be able to bring it to bear without the phone killing itself.” – FBI Director James Comey, March 1 , 2016.

ACLU sues Minnesota for police violence against the press

We are facing a full-scale assault on the First Amendment freedom of the press.

ICE Deports 3 U.S. Citizen Children Held Incommunicado Prior to the Deportation

Families disappeared and isolated without legal access; one child with cancer deported without medication and pregnant mother deported as well

A Decade-Old Gag Order, Lifted

More than a decade ago, a man named Nick Merrill approached the NYCLU and ACLU with an unusual request for help. At the time, Nick ran a small Internet access and consulting business, called Calyx, in New York City.

A living death: Sentenced to die behind bars for what?

For 3,278 people, it was nonviolent offenses like stealing a $159 jacket or serving as a middleman in the sale of $10 of marijuana. An estimated 65% of them are Black. Many of them were struggling with mental illness, drug dependency or financial desperation when they committed their crimes. None of them will ever…

New documents reveal scale of US Government’s cell phone location data tracking

Thousands of previously unreleased records illustrate how government agencies sidestep our Fourth Amendment rights.

The FBI Is Tracking Our Faces in Secret, and We’re Suing

There can be no accountability if there is no transparency.

I Was Arrested for Learning a Foreign Language. Today, I Have Some Closure

Five years ago, the Philadelphia police thought that carrying Arabic-language flashcards was enough to warrant the arrest of an innocent traveler. A settlement reached today in a lawsuit I brought against the police department makes it clear that it is not.

Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public

ACLU documents how surveillance camera company Flock has lied to local officials about its operations

Your smartphone, their rules: App stores enable corporate-government censorship

Big Tech Oligopoly helps the Trump Administration crack down on free speech

Too Many Cops Are Told They’re Soldiers Fighting a War. How Did We Get Here?

This post is the first in series on the militarization of policing. Check back this week from more from Radley Balko .

The Constitution Applies When the Government Bans Americans From the Skies

The government does not have the unchecked authority to place individuals on a secret blacklist without providing them any meaningful opportunity to object, the ACLU argued in a brief filed last Friday with the federal district court in Oregon.

FBI: If you knew what your phone company tells us, you'd probably sue

Police Accidentally Record Themselves Conspiring to Fabricate Charges

The ACLU of Connecticut is suing state police for fabricating retaliatory criminal charges against a protester after troopers were recorded discussing how to trump up charges against him. In what seems like an unlikely stroke of cosmic karma, the recording came about after a camera belonging to the protester, Michael…

An FBI Counterterrorism Agent Tracked Me Down Because I Took a Picture of This

The Government is Silencing Twitter and Yahoo, and It Won't Tell Us Why

The government is using shaky legal arguments to silence major Internet companies without giving them – or the public – the opportunity to respond. In three separate recent cases, the government has sent a grand jury subpoena to Yahoo or Twitter and requested a gag order from a magistrate judge, attempting to bar…

Mysterious Planes Over Baltimore Spark Surveillance Suspicions

It all started with a simple Twitter query from a Baltimore man: “Anyone know who has been flying the light plane in circles above the city for the last few nights?” This was several days after the death of Freddie Gray in police custody, and the subsequent riots and protests. Pete Cimbolic, an aviation buff and…

Police Documents on License Plate Scanners Reveal Mass Tracking

Automatic license plate readers are the most widespread location tracking technology you’ve probably never heard of. Mounted on patrol cars or stationary objects like bridges, they snap photos of every passing car, recording their plate numbers, times, and locations. At first the captured plate data was used just to…

Meet Jack. Or, What The Government Could Do With All That Location Data

We now know that the NSA is collecting location information en masse. As we’ve long said, location data is an extremely powerful set of information about people.

Court Rules No Suspicion Needed for Laptop Searches at Border

Decision Dismisses ACLU Lawsuit Challenging DHS Search Policy as Unconstitutional...

New NSA Documents Shine More Light into Black Box of Executive Order 12333

What is arguably the most powerful of the U.S. government’s surveillance authorities is also the most secretive, and it operates with the least amount of oversight.

The FBI Is Breaking into Encrypted Devices – We’re Suing

We can't let the FBI keep the public in the dark about its ability to gain access to information stored on our personal mobile devices.

Judge Releases Information about Police Use of Stingray Cell Phone Trackers

A Florida judge has sided with the ACLU to order release of information about police use of “stingrays,” which are invasive surveillance devices that send out powerful signals to trick cell phones into transmitting their locations and identifying information. The Tallahassee judge’s pro-transparency decision stands in…

Amazon’s Face Recognition Falsely Matched 28 Members of Congress with Mugshots

Amazon’s face surveillance technology is the target of growing opposition nationwide, and today, there are 28 more causes for concern. In a test the ACLU recently conducted of the facial recognition tool, called “Rekognition,” the software incorrectly matched 28 members of Congress, identifying them as other people…

FBI: If We Told You . . . (Part II)

Yesterday, we posted a troubling explanation from the FBI of why it doesn’t want you to know whether your phone and internet providers are cooperating in the most expansive surveillance program that Congress has ever enacted: You might sue.

Debt Collection Companies Have Hijacked the Justice System

Lauren Smith (pseudonym) a mother of three in Indiana, had to file for bankruptcy because she couldn’t afford to repay her bills for treatment for thyroid cancer. And because she was unable to work, she had to stay with her parents in Florida while she recovered. She didn’t know that during that time, at the request…

A Secretly Detained American Has Asked for a Lawyer – But Gov Won’t Give Him One

An American being held without charges by the U.S. military in Iraq has asked for an attorney, the ACLU finally learned last night following an extraordinary court hearing . The government is resisting our efforts to make contact with the man so he can challenge his detention, in an outrageous violation of the basic…

The Government Is Keeping a U.S. Citizen Secretly Locked Up Without Charges

For nearly two months, the U.S. military has been detaining an American citizen at a secret jail in Iraq, denying him access to a lawyer and even refusing to release his name. The Trump administration is calling the citizen an “enemy combatant,” claiming he was fighting for ISIS in Syria, but it has not presented any…